How Connected Home Service is Driving Revenue at British Gas

Posted on: 12 May 2017

By:Patrick Oliphant

The acquisition of Alertme by British Gas is now bearing fruit for the energy company. According to Centrica, British Gas’s parent company, connected home services revenue is up 30% to the end of April 2017, with over 600,000 connected hubs installed and over 900,000 connected products sold to date.

Over the last seven years British Gas has been investing heavily in its connected home services. According to British Gas, connected home is one of their focus areas for growth, thus they have brought together their expertise in the UK and North America to create one global business unit around their connected home services. Their objective, is to develop their platform to offer their customer peace of mind through home energy management and home automation.

Last year, the company launched ‘Boiler IQ’, a subscription-based connected boiler solution that uses sensors to remotely diagnose boiler faults. 30,000 installation has been down so far, with good feedback, said British Gas.

“During the year we launched four new Connected Home products in the Hive range; the Active Plug, Window and Door Sensor, Motion Sensor, and Active Lights. We have also redesigned our products for non-UK markets and we are now selling Hive products in North America,” said British Gas. Hive products are also available in Ireland.

The company has formed strategic partnership with Amazon to integrate the Hive product range with Amazon Echo, allowing their Hive customers to control their heating, lighting and plugged-in devices simply by speaking through the Alexa voice assistant. In addition, their energy insight products, My Energy in the UK and Direct Your Energy in North America, are now available to more than 3.6 million customers.

The plan, said British Gas is to continue to invest in the in the platform. “We will look to expand the Hive product range, including the launch of a water leak detection product enabled by the acquisition of Flowgem in 2016, and drive sales of Hive products in North America.”